Sovera

Just a modified version of my other Rad build. Mostly same deal, loads of procs backed by Rad allowing for -res, but in this case amped in 30% from /Bio's Offensive Stance. Atomic Blast + Aim (ugh, that horrible Aim recharge time) in HD does 593 damage. With Offensive Stance this goes up to 770 and that's assuming we are not fighting a hard target (AV/pylon) and used Cosmic Burst first (check the Rad/Ninjutsu build for ST rotation) and the -res procced, or if we are in Opportunity mode and got that sweet -res. I'm not even sure if HD takes in consideration a Sentinel's native -res. Why Rad? Rad allows for a multitude of procs including -res and Sentinel's sets are homogenized (hit create new character. Compare every set with the slider set to 50) to a point where no set stands heads and shoulders above the others (hello Fire in any other AT in the game). Fire's T3 attack is still bugged anyway. The reason I stopped messing with /Bio builds was the matter of softcapping defenses and how I was forced to keep on munching purples to be softcapped where they would eventually run out even if combining them. Taking inspiration on other builds I've cooked and some experience the build fixes this by pushing defense to 40% and then relying on Barrier to provide the other 5% (at the very least Barrier *always* provides 5%). This only works from 45+, but in my experience lower content than that is usually ran at +0 so it does not matter as much. So this allows to be /Bio *and* use inspiration combining binds (I have those scattered around in other builds if curious about them) to keep on producing and munching on reds instead of purples while getting to have /Bio's OP Ablative Shield and Rebuild DNA to stay alive. Radiation's T9 having a Hold makes it especially easy to survive. The recovery is low-ish at 3.12 per second (not accounting for the three end procs) and since it is a theorycrafted build I don't know if that is fine especially with Assault, feel free to toss out Assault and put in super Speed with a Celerity stealth IO for perfect stealth. If the Rad/Ninjutsu showed anything it was that Defensive Opportunity was a great endurance refiller though. Hasten is a bit weak sauce at 133 seconds, but eh, sacrifices had to be made. The Force Feedback in KO Blow ought to help. That Aim recharge is just horrible. The strength of a Sentinel is tossing T9s every 25 seconds. Doing it every 33 seconds is almost Blaster times. Aim and Atomic Blast recharge in 27 seconds. Less once Force Feedback gets rolling.

I don't know if we are yet. I know Flares used to be the go to filler skill, yes, but it was before the new PPM formula was brought up which shuffled things. Positron having a longer cast is not a problem as long as the other skills are not recharged by the time it has finished casting, and an attack chain eschewing Fire Ball and Flares seems to only win both in endurance and time spent casting if we are using only Blaze, Blazing Bolt and Positron Cell. Looking at the build I cooked up with 45% Musculature: - Flares at 156. - Fireball shows as doing 182 damage with 4.77 recharge. - Blaze at 417 and 2.77 recharge. - Positron at... it's hard to tell, 388? 422? with 5.5 recharge. - Blazing Bolt at 345 (I doubt this is correct with the new snipe formula though I have 21.7% ToHit) and recharging in 3.46 Blaze, Blazing Bolt, Blaze, Positron, Blaze has a one second between Blazes. Blaze being the monster hitter of the set and turned into the filler works well even with the one second gap between skills. Though I prefer that rotation there is also Blaze, BB, Positron, Fireball that shouldn't have a gap anymore but that's a lot less Blazes going out per minute.

Blazing Bolt is bugged on Sentinels, so they lose their T3, so testing the damage of a Fire Sentinel is moot until this is fixed. But Flares on a Blaster, really? Not Positron Cell with four damage procs? Flares? Wat? The scrapper pylon thread has Fire/Atomic doing 2 minute pylon runs. My Rad/Ninjutsu Sentinel had 287 DPS pylon with Rad only attacks for a 4 minute Pylon. If I was to remake it as a Rad/Bio, perfectly doable with what I've learned since then, this will be boosted by another 30%. I won't try to guess exactly the boost it would be since variables, but once Justin as test server is back I'm tempted to try it. Nihiili's Fire/Rad Sentinel (again, using Fire is gimping ourselves since the T3 is busted) achieved 3 minute runs so more than 287 DPS.

Overall I'd say Fire. Tremendous nuke. It's the Titan Weapon of Blasters. You're not nearly going to get the numbers of a BS on a Stalker (or Titan Weapons in any AT). Meleers tend to be beasts and undisputed kings of massive orange numbers.

That's true. To a point Sentinel's sets were normalized so much that we can almost say no set has a clear advantage. As I mentioned with a Blaster Radiation's T9 does 1200 damage. Inferno's does 2k. Brutal difference, but Radiation's T9 does a Hold and -def and etc etc so it's a tax that it pays. With a Sentinel both do *exactly* the same damage (go to the character creator, push the slider to 50, compare numbers) despite Radiation's Hold and -def and etc still being there. if we go down the list and compare T1 and T2 and even T3 the numbers are all pretty similar. The vaunted Fire, uber damage set, only has a small few DoTs which, I haven't mathed it, but seem that they would only just manage to make up for the lack of procs that the set can take compared to others. I'd do a practical test on Justin, but Fire's T3 is still bugged four months later and there is no point until it is fixed. @nihiliiilli's Fire Sentinel got 3 minute times, but his is /Rad armor and that set has some extra tools to bump damage up which may account for it more than using a procced out Char. All the times I've seen with Sentinels between @oldskool and others seem to hover around four minute and four minute and a half which further emphasize the uniformity of the offensive sets. Which isn't *bad*. It's good to choose something thematically and not grumble because we are gimping ourselves.

Why would you get stunned? CC is the big gigantic hole in the AT and Clarion, even just at T3, fixes this. I didn't even bother going to T4 Clarion and was never again stunned. Maybe in an ITF, sure, because there is so little CC floating there, but all toggles suppressed at the first hint of CC is a death trap. You're going to probably say you went for recharge or endurance, but seriously, both of those can be fixed within the build, but not CC protection. ITF is something that kills me easily since a blaster has no DDR, but my ninjutsu Sentinel dies just as easily since its DDR is just not enough. Since I play a gimmicky build that relies on /Atomic's -ToHit in Beta Decay and that only has a 15 yard radius I'm squishy to big death rooms (hello there, final room in LGTF) but that's what purples are for when the situation gets chaotic.

I think you make yourself a disservice by not taking it. A mass AoE CC that recharges in 25 seconds makes most Controllers green with envy. It was less needed with my Radiation/Atomic since Radiation's T9 also had a Hold, but with the Fire/Atomic I still use Inferno without BU + Aim on one spawn, then the next spawn while inferno is recharging I Radioactive Cloud first, then lazily hit Aim and BU while in the middle of the spawn, then Fireball + Rain of Fire + Atom Smasher, and it's only once all that damage has gone in that the mobs wake to start hitting me.

You're absolutely correct, @frosticus. I've transferred the IOs to a Fire/Atomic and I'm seeing what you are talking about. The chase of set bonuses forced some unhappy slotting and re-doing the build to fit Fire made me realize I could have dumped X-ray Beam and Assault, since the endurance is iffy even without Assault and I never toggled it anyway always expecting my next upgrade to give me enough endurance for it. In exchange for Assault I could have taken Cosmic Burst and used the slots from X-ray Beam. Cosmic Burst would indeed require procs and the bonus I got from that set would need to be found somewhere. I notice this with Fire when I saw I was falling in a natural rotation of Blaze, Blazing Bolt, Blaze, Positron Cell, Blaze, and it hit me how my spammy move was not some crap T2 but actually *the* strongest move I had. Edit: I still feel that the build works pretty well at being a Blanker Proctroller though as you mention the ST chain needs to be re-thought and re-worked. The concept of throwing loads of CC around while doing blaster damage is still valid. But after a Radiation Sentinel and now a Radiation Blaster I feel like I'm done faffing around with procs. Even the T9 having a 40% tax because of the Hold (1200 damage with Aim + BU compared to 2000 Inferno) starts to feel heavy now. At this point of the timeline I just want to have one high performance character to have something to compare to.

Illusion/kin would be daft for a succubus (sorry!). It ought to be Mental/Psi Dom or some such.

I would definitely never recommend a blaster for a first character. And by that I do mean not just never ever ever ever recommend a blaster but actively try to discourage them from it. All you've said above stands in terms of class design. Even things like having an aura that taunts given to a squishy blaster makes zero sense. A Sentinel would be my first choice, and if they like melee instead then a brute/scrapper (again, not a tanker, simply because expectations and low damage. Same reason I would not encourage someone to play a controller for their first character. They may love the idea of CC but be completely turned off, like, drop the game level of turn off, of doing the early levels doing low two digit damage). Once they have tried a scrapper/sentinel, then sure, have them try a blaster. They just need to be aware the game is not a mess of being CCed and killed by a gobbo with a rotten stick hitting their knee as you rightfully put it.

Playing devil's advocate. Of course if this is asked in the Sentinel forums the response will be (and were) overwhelmingly in favor of Sentinels. Most of what you speak happens as we level (I have bad memories of dying against grey mobs on my blaster). But double XP doesn't make leveling a tremendously long process. 4-5 hours from 1 to 50 if powerleveled. 2-3 days for me by doing TFs from level 8 to 50. At 50 we get Clarion, and T3 is enough, and again this is not a long thing to obtain and then boom, CC immune. One day to achieve? Two days? With enough infamy we get softcap levels of defense, which requires about a billion inf, but, yet again, this is not a six month process but rather two or three weeks, more or less depending on time to play or desire to do market flipping. To me this is a bonus. The longer i have something to work for the longer I'm playing it. Once maxed out there isn't much more reason to play the character, but this is just personal preference. What of content under 45 like the weekly strikes? Does it matter? It's usually ran at +0 and not +4. So depending on slowness we can say it takes a month to level a character to max and then trick it out to have a 'glass cannon' with scrapper level of defenses and be CC immune as long as doing level 45+ content. End result? Both my Blaster and my Sentinel jump into a pack of +4 ITF (unhealthy thing, cascading defense failure is a thing, but funny enough y blaster survives better because it has a mass AoE Hold up every 25 seconds) and go on a rampage, with the Blaster uncaring that the Sentinel has CC and a defensive secondary, while doing twice the Sentinel's damage (Aim empowered Inferno does 600 damage on the Sentinel. Regular Inferno with no aim or BU does 1k damage on the Blaster). Edit: this might seem like I'm contradicting what I said above, but I'm really not. Both posts are equally true.

More content, more powersets. Most/all TFs getting a trim to be half hour long, even if means splitting them like Positron.

I feel like I've fallen into a bit of a rut. I've done my experiments with lots of little builds and now I want a high performance 'something' if only to really have 'something' to compare against. The radiation sentinel seemed strong, but only had a four minute pylon time. The radiation blaster with four procs in two out of three ST attacks plus blaster damage *looked* like it did good damage, and turned out to have a 5 minute pylon time. Fire is supposed to be the top dog, but you'd think a -res proc plus three damage procs in one attack, then four damage procs in another attack, would make up for the difference. I was going to try a Fire something, but Sentinel still has Blazing Blast bugged four months later. I edited HD so it shows 5 ticks instead of 13, and, unslotted, BB does 74 damage. The big damage skill of the big damage set. Radiation's Proton Stream, unslotted, does 122 😅 The Sentinel seems very balanced. All T9s do exactly the same damage be it Inferno or Atomic Blast, while in the Blaster side of things Atomic Blast gets a rather massive -40% damage tax for the Hold component it has. That helps a lot in choosing since it can be all thematic. But thanks to the balance Fire doesn't really have much gain over another set. Those 3-5 extra dots for 8 damage aren't exactly game breaking in even though they will get boosted by enhancements and then incarnates. Ice feels very safe when Blizzard makes mobs flop, and a purple proc in Ice Storm makes it do the same, but I don't see it performing better than Radiation.

Am I the only one having problems with clicking on a link in forum posted builds and HD opens but it just loads my last saved build instead of the forum one I clicked? If I click a second and third time it eventually loads the one from the forums.

That would be smarter. After browsing the bug forums with so many but so many posted bugs with few views and no replies I wonder how many of these have officially been acknowledged.

It has been several (four?) months. Blazing Blast is still doing five ticks instead of thirteen making the set's strongest attack worse than the T2. Is there *any* news on the subject, @Captain Powerhouse? Either a 'it's on purpose since Sentinels aren't supposed to do good damage' or 'we were busy with other things these past months'? I'm loathe to believe it is just a matter to flick the 5 for a 13 when coding is involved, but news that it was not swept under the rug would be good.

Good God, 4 months later...? My will to play a Fire sentinel just crashed.

Overwhelming Force works on Bonfire, it was tested a while back, 100% KD conversion *and* it has raw damage in the IO unlike Sudden Acceleration that only does the KD conversion.

Mid 200 isn't bad. It's terrible. As I posted above someone was doing under two minutes with a fire/atomic.

I went to Justin to test since I had a fire character there. It's still doing 5 ticks of damage instead of 13. Is this still so bad that we might as well take the T2 since it has a better DPA? @GM Widower

An idle help me out decide. After leveling my blaster and getting horrid 5 minute pylon times I just came crawling back to a Sentinel. Fire is love, fire is life. I haven't actually made a Fire/ anything yet though. I've done ninjutsu and it's pretty solid. I haven't done EA yet so it is about whether to repeat myself or try something new. Ninjutsu has: - An endurance recovery clicky and a heal both on short CD. (17 seconds) - Built in stealth. - 'Annoying' CC protection being a clickie. - Positional defenses, so everything is deflected, toxic, psi, lethal, etc etc. - Decent resistances: 22% S/L, 19% E/N, 40% F/C/Psi, 33% toxic. EA has : - Typed, so I need to work on the defenses one by one meaning it has a psi (19% defense) and toxic hole (is there anything other than positional to defend against Toxic?). We can say that damage type is rare but the hole is still there. - Its heal is a smidgen longer (25 seconds) but it comes with an endurance reduction component plus 200% regen (400% regen total VS 200% of Ninjutsu) to pump dem numbers up as we wait for the CD to recharge. - An endurance clickie mostly eclipsed by the heal and the fact a Sentinel has Defensive Opportunity making endurance a non consideration. - Normal CC toggle. - 30% S/L, 37% Energy, 34% Negative, 28% fire/cold, 30% toxic... and 8% psi, so the hole is complete, anything psi goes through like in hot butter. I won't lie, I'm definitely leaning towards a second Ninjutsu and only the petty 'gosh, annoying CC clicky' is restraining me, this despite having Hasten and the CC protection clickie bound so they alternate autos.

Was it ever fixed?I remember a while back the talk of Blazing Blast on Sentinels being borked.

I just finished leveling a blaster, and let me tell you that it was exhausting. The damage is loud and brutal thanks to Aim + Build-Up, but the class feels so clunky. As our numeric friend above mentions just the T9s show this. What's the point of burning a pack to cinders if then we can't use it for the next two packs? What's even the point of burning a pack to cinders with so much 'wasted' damage since things are dead already? It came to a point I did not use Aim + BU with my T9 because no point, and I would rather have Aim + BU for the next pack where I'd be T9-less. Then of course there's not having CC protection until level 50, no defenses, etc. On the other hand a Sentinel starts with CC protection early on. Defenses early on don't do much until they stack up enough so that's more of a level 40-50 thing, but the T9 is well build. Sure, less damage, but does it matter? When we pop Aim + T9 (whose CDs match) all minions are dead, and then we use the rest of the AoEs and most things not a boss are on a sliver. AND WE CAN DO IT AGAIN NEXT SPAWN! I was playing with a stalker friend of mine and starting to feel bad for her since every spawn I'd just open up with my T9 and simply clean it and she'd just be poking at the almost dead leftovers. This is *practical* damage, not spreadsheet or pylon killing.

T4 Degenerative crafted. 5 minutes Pylon. Slotted Incarnates: Assault Core Embodiment (not clicked), Clarion Partial Core Invocation, Degenerative Core Flawless Interface, Intuition Radial Paragon. Fire is so obviously superior that not all the procs in the world are enough to catch up to our fiery overlord.

No worries. It means Crowd Control which has become the go to word to mean holds, stuns, sleeps. Anything that 'controls', be it you or NPCs, and prevents from acting.